On Feb 9, 2009, at 5:17 PM, Patrick Cassidy wrote: (01)
> There is one problem I have with this effort at using ontologies to
> help
> define or organize standards; there is as yet no standard for an
> ontology
> that has a enough content to actually represent all the things that
> the
> non-ontology standards talk about. (02)
Nobody heeds such an all-encompassing ontology, however. Each
standardization effort is devoted to a relatively narrow range of
topics and concerns, compared to the full range of all possible
standards. (03)
> Apart from the droll situation of a
> community without a standard trying to formalize the knowledge of
> communities with a standard, (04)
Why is this "droll"? Compare the situation of programming a system to
help standards communities communicate better. There is no 'standard'
programming language to do this in: there are many possibilities, all
of of them viable. This situation is not "droll", but in fact healthy.
It seems to me that the choices available for ontology formalization
are exactly analogous. (05)
> there is the practical question of whether we
> intend to recommend one foundation ontology as the basis for the
> formalization, or take a hands-off position and let a thousand
> incompatible
> flowers bloom? I don't recall whether there is a consensus on this
> point. (06)
As there is no single foundation ontology, it would hardly be
reasonable to suggest using one as the basis for anything. (07)
> As you know, I feel strongly that getting some agreement among at
> least one
> large user community on the content of *some* foundation ontology
> should be
> a very high priority objective until it is accomplished, regardless
> of how
> often we have talked about it. Other tasks are IMHO at least
> secondary, and
> perhaps dependent on the first. (08)
And my opinion is the exact opposite. Getting such agreement is both
unnecessary and probably impossible. It would achieve nothing other
the creation of a huge and unusable formalization which would then be
ignored for almost all applications, being too unwieldy and needlessly
complicated and mired in pointless controversy to be usefully applied
to any particular domain. (09)
Pat Hayes (010)
>
>
> Pat
>
> Patrick Cassidy
> MICRA, Inc.
> 908-561-3416
> cell: 908-565-4053
> cassidy@xxxxxxxxx
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
>> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Michael Gruninger
>> Sent: Monday, February 09, 2009 4:38 PM
>> To: [ontolog-forum]
>> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] standard ontology
>>
>> Hi Pat,
>>
>> I see the following tasks and questions as being in the scope of the
>> upcoming Ontology Summit
>> Towards Ontology-based Standards:
>>
>> - Design ontologies that formalize concepts within existing standards
>>
>> - Ontological analysis of existing standards (i.e. identify potential
>> problems
>> and semantic ambiguities) and the subsequent use of ontologies to
>> reengineer existing standards
>>
>> - Can existing ontologies be used to support the integration of
>> existing
>> standards?
>> If not, what ontologies are needed?
>>
>> - What ontologies should we be designing to lay the foundations for
>> emerging standards
>> and standards that are are currently under development?
>>
>> The standards within this scope are often in specific industrial
>> domains
>> (e.g. STEP and other SC4 standards) rather than the upper-level
>> arena.
>> On the other hand, OMG efforts such as SVBR would also be in the
>> scope,
>> and these are more general.
>>
>> - michael
>>
>>
>> Pat Hayes wrote:
>>
>>> Umm... I am confused (and I apologize for missing the telecon that
>>> might have unconfused me.) The topic for the current Summit mixes
>>> the
>>> topics of 'ontology' and 'standards'. But this can be understood in
>>> several rather different ways.
>>>
>>> (1) Using ontologies as a tool in the business of writing standards.
>>> Here, 'writing standards' is a broadly conceived topic area, and the
>>> standards might refer to almost anything. For example, someone might
>>> argue that the business of writing standards for future high-speed
>> USB
>>> communication protocols would benefit from the participants writing
>>> and using ontologies, or perhaps a particular ontology.
>>>
>>> (2) Defining, or approaching the definition of, a standard ontology.
>>> This would presumably be some variety of 'unified upper level' or
>>> 'comprehensive' ontology, or perhaps a collection of related
>>> ontologies, etc.., of the kind developed as part of the Cyc project
>> or
>>> the SUMO effort, or as proposed by Pat Cassidy or Azamat in previous
>>> postings.
>>>
>>> (3) Standardizing the business of writing ontologies themselves.
>>> This
>>> would presumably link with our previous focus on ontology
>>> repositories, where a strong theme emerged of "quality control" for
>>> ontologies, and several nascent ontology-writing methodologies, or
>>> at
>>> least collections of good-practice rules and maxims, seemed to be
>>> visible in the general intellectual murk.
>>>
>>> If I follow Azamat and Ravi's messages, below, they seem (?) to be
>>> talking about (2), but I'm not sure that this is the intended
>>> interpretation for the Summit.
>>>
>>> Pater, can you confirm/clarify?
>>>
>>> Pat Hayes
>>>
>>
>>
>>
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